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Daniel Kahneman has died

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Re: Daniel Kahneman has died

#241

Post by AceyMan »

ashton314 wrote: post #133

For me the best part about reading Thinking: Fast and Slow is that I'm more distrustful of my own thought processes. That little bit of questioning of my own conclusions has helped me see gaps in my reasoning. My dream is to one day have the caliber of insights this man had, along with his ability to express them so clearly and persuasively. dang, does this deserve a black bar?

as an owner of my softbound copy of TF&S I was surprised there wasn't one here already. (I saw the WSJ article drop the minute it posted, as a subscriber.) RIP, Prof. K.

Re: Daniel Kahneman has died

#242

Post by ants_everywhere »

localhost wrote: post #61
btilly wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The density of non-replicable results varies by chapter. You can ignore anything said in chapter 4 about priming for example. See https://replicationindex.com/2020/12/30/a-meta-scientific-pe... for more.

This is exactly the kind of task that I want to deploy a long context window model on: "rewrite Thinking Fast and Slow taking into account the current state of research. Oh, and do it in the voice, style and structure of Tim Urban complete with crappy stick figure drawings."

It's not even clear that the dual process system 1/system 2 metaphor is accurate at all, so it may not be possible to redeem a book whose thesis is that the dual process model is correct.

It's not just that individual studies have failed to replicate. The whole field was in question at least a decade before the book was written, and since then many of the foundational results have failed to replicate. The book was in a sense the last hurrah of a theory that was on its way out, and the replication crisis administered the coup de grace IMO.

Re: Daniel Kahneman has died

#243

Post by clbrmbr »

ghaff wrote: post #137
freedomben wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same! Just earlier today I was wanting to do this with "The Moral Animal" and "Guns, Germs, and Steel." It's probably the AI thing I'm most excited about, and I suspect we're not far from that, although I'm betting the copyright battles are the primary obstacle to such a future at this point.

The thing with Guns, Germs, and Steel is that it make it essentially all about geographic determinism. There's another book ( Why the West Rules--For Now written before China had really fully emerged on the stage) which argues that, yes, geography played an important role in which cores emerged earliest. BUT if you look at the sweep of history, the eastern core was arguably more advanced than the western core at vari…

I enjoyed both GGS and WTWRFN, but in a mode where I basically ignored the thesis, reading instead for the factual information so clearly presented. Like the coverage of the Polynesian diaspora in GGS that has really stuck with me.

Thinking Fast & Slow was a fun read, but I did not retain much more than the basic System I/II concept which I find is a useful device.

Re: Daniel Kahneman has died

#244

Post by geokon »

BeFlatXIII wrote: post #177
cvwright wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find that most nonfiction books follow a common structure: * 1st third of the book: Lays out the basic ideas, gives several examples * 2nd third of the book: More examples that repeat the themes from the 1st part * 3rd third of the book: ??? I usually give up at this point I sometimes wish that more books were like "The Mom Test" - just long enough to say what they need, even if that makes for a short book.

> 3rd third of the book: ??? I usually give up at this point History of science books thankfully stave off that final third until at least 80%. However, their final chapter or two universally manages to be a letdown. It's either wild optimistic speculation, hype for a theory that's debunked 5 years after publication, or a focus that accidentally happened to predict the course of science post-publication. The story is…

Counter example: The selfish gene

The last 20% shifts in tone and goes into speculating on a general framework for genetic selection outside of biological systems. Very speculative, interesting, and birthed the term meme

Re: Daniel Kahneman has died

#245

Post by faeriechangling »

mistercow wrote: post #13
zug_zug wrote: post #6

I'm not one to give an exaggerated eulogy nor rhapsodize about all those "Books with a white cover and a weird picture" -- but I will say I read thinking fast and slow for the first time last year, after decades of resisting, and felt it covered some generally profound ideas that still are relevant as ever and not widely understood. (Though at some point, maybe the 2nd half of the book, drags on and you can skip most…

It’s worth noting that many of the results in Thinking, Fast and Slow didn’t hold up to replication. It’s still very much worth reading in its own right, but now implicitly comes bundled with a game I like to call “calibrate yourself on the replication crisis”. Playing is simple: every time the book mentions a surprising result, try to guess whether it replicated. Then search online to see if you got it right.

“Many” is hyperbole, “Some” is more fair and his results stood up or the replication crisis better than most of his contemporaries.

Re: Daniel Kahneman has died

#246

Post by faeriechangling »

resource_waste wrote: post #162
elbear wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Embarrassed because science worked as expected?

Doesn't science require replication? He wrote books based on un-replicated studies. Further, the confidence he extolled about his now debunked ideas make him a charlatan. This person was a bad scientist. If we esteem people who don't check their data and influence millions of people with falsities, we are going to create a society with low trust. Just look at this thread, the man lost respect among the people in the…

I’m in the know and the replication crisis created boosted my confidence in him because it wiped out half the field while merely discrediting a few of the chapters and studies in thinking fast and slow, most of which was discredited he cited from other researchers.

I did see a lot of charlatans in this thread fail to appreciate the broader context of the replication crisis and failed to appreciate how unscathed Kahneman was by it because he was being careful when his peers were not and long before people started judging him with the wisdom of perfect hindsight. Of course if they wrote such a book they would only express their ideas with timidity and never make a mistake.

I read his book alongside a guide as to what in his book could be ignored. I knew every damning word people said about the man before I read a word he said and left impressed.

Re: Daniel Kahneman has died

#247

Post by faeriechangling »

smcin wrote: post #234
trash_cat wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you be specific what ideas of his aren't scientific? It's true that science requires replication but he deals with models but perhaps uses bad studies to support it. It's like saying he should replicate the theory of evolution.

If you google "Which Kahneman claims were wrong" , here are the first two of 4.97m hits" https://slate.com/technology/2016/12/kahneman-and-tversky-re... https://replicationindex.com/category/thinking-fast-and-slow... > "Table 1 shows the number of results that were available and the R-Index for chapters that mentioned empirical results. The chapters vary dramatically in terms of the number of studies that are present…

Which is to say in other words, most of the book probably replicates, particularly the parts based on Kahneman’s own work, and for the parts that don’t you can just skip the chapters or take them with a grain of salt.

Kahneman to me always struck me as the one eyed king of the replication crisis. Yes he fucked up but he fucked up notably less than his contemporaries and most of his work is still readable.

Re: Daniel Kahneman has died

#248

Post by btilly »

boulos wrote: post #208
btilly wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The density of non-replicable results varies by chapter. You can ignore anything said in chapter 4 about priming for example. See https://replicationindex.com/2020/12/30/a-meta-scientific-pe... for more.

That isn't what that blog post is saying. It's saying that the author's invented metric may indicate that the studies within each chapter may not replicate. No actual replication studies were done to produce the table in that post.

My comment about priming is due to articles like https://replicationindex.com/2017/02/02/reconstruction-of-a-.... As https://replicationindex.com/2017/02/02/reconstruction-of-a-... shows, Daniel Kahneman came to agree that priming research was bunk.

I included that blog post as a guide to what other results may be suspect.

Re: Daniel Kahneman has died

#249

Post by sooheon »

kbenson wrote: post #228
daymanstep wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But once you fact-check him a few times, then you won't be able to trust that his sources support his points anymore, which then raises the question: Is there ANY evidence that supports what Gladwell is trying to say? If the best evidence that Gladwell could find to support his points, don't support his points, then it really makes me question the utility of trying to find evidence to support Gladwell's points. It ma…

The problem is that Gladwell comes off as trying to be scientific, when really he's just a persuasive storyteller. If you view Gladwell as a purveyor of facts or a science communicator, then he does a horrible job and yes, it's hard to trust whatever he presents because he's at best not very careful about his facts and conclusions. In that case, why would you ever pay attention to him? On the other hand if you see Gl…

The problem with "take it or leave it, it's just a story" is that stories are not neutral, or cost-free. Memes compete for attention/proliferation/survival, and false-but-appealing memes outcompete true-but-boring memes. It's a mini DDOS attack on our collective bandwidth to be churning out durable falsehoods disguised as scientific insight.

Re: Daniel Kahneman has died

#250

Post by arduanika »

dorianmariefr wrote: post #240

is it me or the washington post making money off obituaries kinda weird?

Only insofar as it's "kinda weird" to run a service where you notice interesting new things that happen in the world, and then write professional, mostly-reliable words about them, to share with your general audience.

In past centuries, this was a fairly common business model, but I understand the concept sounds pretty jarring to modern ears.

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